BloomsBy Florist Marketing Blog
by BloomsBy

Writing a Floral Business Plan

Floral Designers’ goal is to make money doing the thing they love most!

Writing technical papers like business plans sounds like a lot of work, and you may think it’s irrelevant for someone who’s starting out. However, business plans are even more important for business early on.

What Makes a Floral Business Plan Important

A business plan guides yours helps you track your long-term objectives and the strategies you use to achieve them. Planning is crucial in business because we are not simply dealing with money; time and effort are on the line—your time, and everyone helping you. Also, formalizing your vision helps you assess your current position and your capabilities of reaching it.

Aside from that, business plans let you plan ahead for possible problems you might get into. This requires you to analyze the market trend of flowers around your area, and look into your possible competitors. By getting this knowledge, you can appropriately predict possible highs and lows of the industry.

Business plans are also a requirement to get a loan from most banks. Banks need to determine if you can, at minimum, pay the loan back. This is very important especially for newcomers and people who plan upgrades to their shop.

Parts of a Business Plan

Title Page

The title page contains all the basic information about your flower shop, which includes your shop’s name, address, your name as the owner (and of others who co-owns the shop), and other relevant information like the registration number of your business (if you have any, this may vary by area). It should also contain your business logo.

Executive Summary

The summary of your business plan, It has its own parts in it: (a) the business summary, (b) the future summary, (c) the market summary, and (d) the finance summary.

The business summary basically contains all the basic information related to your shop (think title page but more comprehensive).

The future summary outlines your vision for your shop, as well as your goals and objectives.

Lastly, the finance summary contains your expected sales, the money you need to start up, where you’ll get these funds and other monetary information. It should tell the reader about your current financial position.

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Management Plan

The management plan or the operations section contains all the nitty-gritty details of your business, from your flower suppliers, equipment, and production processes to your inventory, payment modes, operating hours, and communication channels. You can list out the products and services you plan to deliver. This can easily become the longest and important part of the business plan, so take your time writing this part.

Marketing Plan

As the name suggests, the marketing plan contains your analysis of your potential customers and competitors. It also includes the key marketing strategies that you plan to implement for your shop, such as running special discounts on holidays and other special occasions.

Future Plan

Again, the name suggests that the future plan contains your prospective plans for your shop. Here you can state your vision for your shop (something like the “premier flower business in the locale”) and your business goals. It is important to not just think of quick goals to attain but rather long-term goals that you hope to achieve.

Image via Shutterstock

Financial Plan

The financial plan contains everything about your shop’s finances. Here, you go into detail about the cash flow of your business. You are expected to list out your current creditors and debtors, your source of funding, and your projected cash flow; these are often tabulated with the figures and dates. If you have been working on your business plan with your shop already up and running, you can also add a profit and loss statement.

Supporting Documentation

At this part of the business plan, you can include some documents that are relevant to your business: permits, maps, financial tables, and other attachments that readers of your plan might use to refer.

Floral Designers, do you have a business plan in place, What are some things you put in place that could help other florists, please share your comments down below!